Rewiring Your Brain for Fun and Profit - The Fallacy of Self-Help
Forget visualization and the pseudo-science of 'the law of attraction.'
A couple of years ago, I was having a conversation with a friend from Mexico who was visiting her boyfriend in Belgium. She was a true believer in the law of attraction after reading 'The Secret.'
"It's simple," she said casually. "All I have to do is believe that my wishes will come true."
"So, it's the same as religion then?", I asked, trying to keep an open mind.
"Oh no, you cannot compare my belief in God with this. The law of attraction is a proven system", she retorted.
The law of attraction a proven system?
It's been six years since I saw her. She's a single mother now, living in Mexico. Visualization is an illusion; that's the only 'secret' that was revealed to her during all those years. To be fair, she was intent on having a child. That did indeed happen to her. But I remember the discussion we had back then. Being a single mom was definitely not one of the images she had in her head when visualizing her dream life.
I can hear the pro-visualization goons going off already: "She didn't do it right! She didn't ask the universe the correct questions! She didn't really believe!"
Stop it already. Save your breath for those weak and feeble minds who might believe this nonsense.
Let's turn to cold hard science. Let's throw out silly beliefs and put our trust in scientifically backed conclusions. Or is that a bridge too far for you believers? Because let's face it, why let facts get in the way of a good story, right? Especially one that sells as good as 'The Secret'.
Every single person I met that believed in the law of attraction, could not give me a simple explanation why it works. The ones who were successful claimed they 'attracted' it somehow. Those for who this magical power did not work, brushed it off as normal. They attracted the bad luck streak they were having.
I fail to see any difference with the irrational belief of an all-powerful bearded dude in the sky who's supposed to have a plan for all of us. Science will set us free. And yes, we don't know everything. We cannot explain everything. But we can ask questions. And the answers to these questions will give us new insights that lead to yet another rational discussion.
Don't just accept ancient stories as truth. Be critical and rational. THINK! Don't just believe. Especially not in old manuscripts that have been incorrectly translated and abused for thousands of years. Let's turn to science to dissect the law of attraction.
All the self-help gurus are just helping themselves to YOUR hard-earned money. They realize it's an easy sale. Create some products where you promise people they can completely change their life simply by altering your thoughts. Is there a better angle to catch the underachieving, wanna-get-rich-quick couch potato? And if it doesn't work, they can brush it off as the client's own fault. They did not believe; they weren't thinking positive.
Purely from a marketers and business point of view, it makes sense. The self-help market is huge. I'm talking billions of dollars in sales every single year. But it won't work for everyone. And the snake oil sellers putting out these products know that very well.
Why Positive Affirmations Lead to Procrastination
We all know them. They are the people that post those irritating positivity quotes on your Facebook wall.
They are the ones who hang motivational posters around the office. The people who start their day talking to themselves. Droning off positive affirmations like a disillusioned survivor of the zombie apocalypse.
Science has a cold hard truth for you. You're lying to yourself. Ignoring reality is a favorite technique used by believers. But that's not the worst part. Everyone one of us ignores reality from time to time. It enables our simple human minds to cope with truths that are too big to handle. Truths that are so vast that we cannot begin to comprehend them. So our mind creates convenient little lies to make sense of the world.
But purposefully creating an incorrect world view and imagining your perfect life is nothing more than bending the truth. You can stand in front of a mirror every day and say a hundred times to yourself that you're going to be the most handsome guy in the world. But if you're so ugly that people see you as the missing link in evolution, it's never going to happen. Not unless you spend a fortune on cosmetic surgery.
A study done by the 'Journal of Experimental Social Psychology in 2011 found that positive fantasies about your ideal future and life saps your energy instead of boosting it. They concluded that positive affirmation and visualization triggers the reward response in our brain. It makes our brain think we already achieved what we are visualizing!
Is It All Just Smoke and Mirrors?
We don't know a great deal about the human brain. Huge questions are left unanswered. What is consciousness? Why do we sleep and dream? We are walking and talking electrochemical machines. And we have no explanation for the absurdness of our existence. This creates a perfect marketplace for snake oil sellers and religions. They help people make sense of the world around them.
But there is a form of self-help available that IS backed by scientifical studies. Neuro-linguistic programming is the systematic study of the relationship between what we think (neuro), language, and the habits or script that are running our lives (programming).
I think therefore I am.
Every single on of us has their interpretation of the world, which we take for granted, and assume as truth. All our actions are based on this understanding. If we can change this interpretation, we can change our actions.
Changing my mental picture of what I believed as truth, is what made me successful. Not accepting what I was taught, what I saw on TV, what my parents told you. That's how I changed my life. I learned how to master my fears and create habits that forced me to take action to reach the future I saw before me.
I imagined the entire path that lay before me. From start to finish. I stopped focusing on the outcome and started paying attention to the road that would lead me there. I trained my brain to enjoy uncertainty. Which was something my brain was not wired to do. Growing up in Belgium, a social-democratic nation, teaches you to fear risk and the unknown. Safety nets are all around you; there's little consequence if you fail. People are getting brainwashed to become a cog in someone else's machine. The education system sets you up for a life of servitude in a company. I lost count how many times my teachers and parents told me that "what are you going to do later in your job, when you can't even pay attention in class?" I even had teachers telling me that I would end up in jail before I was 30. That's how much worth they put into being an obedient, law-abiding, tax-paying citizen. Something I was not cut out for.
But my brain got used to this, though. I accepted their worldview as truth. At 18years old, I couldn't imagine myself starting my own business. I had to re-wire my brain to overcome my fears. I was scared to let go of the security and safety net a cushy corporate job gave me. Deciding to move from Belgium to Asia wasn't a walk in the park either. I managed all of that by teaching my brain to expect and enjoy the unknown.
I had to let go of my old mental pictures. I stopped paying attention to my previous failures and bad experiences. When someone gave me negative feedback in the past, I took personal offense. Months later I would still be thinking of that one negative comment someone gave me about a dj-set I played. It took me a while to get rid of these irrational connections my brain made. NLP showed me a way to change my perception of reality. And that, in turn, allows you to create your own reality!
So don't wait for 'the secret' to be revealed to you. The truth is, there is no secret. People who tell you otherwise are just trying to make a quick buck off you.
Sources:
http://www.anlp.org/files/a-critical-review-of-nlp-as-an-effective-for-individuals-with-depression-or-anxiety-lisa-wake_6_176.pdf
http://www.steverrobbins.com/nlpschedule/random/research-summary.html
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002210311100031X)
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I read only half of it so pardon me if I'm missing a lot from it.
You used so many times "science" that I thought you're a science-evangelist. Maybe you are not. I agree with "science will free ourselves", I like science but you know what ?
A Buddhist munk will say: " this is a ming game. Release yourself from the smartness bias. Life is. There is no good and wrong."
A scientist finds a vaccine and tells me: "there is no other great thing to do in life than to serve others."
A alpinist, in the top of a mountain will tell me: "life without nature is nothing. If you can't see the nature from uphere you can't understand nature."
...... and so on.... everybody things about himself that is the shit. He knows the meaning of life, he understood life. It"s damn common sense.
What's my point of view telated to all these ?
As long as they don't ruin my life I share the same planet with tthem. And I'll use all their experience fot understanding my life better.
I'll not live their life but I'll use the good parts from them.
I don't believe in positive psychology. I hate NLP and other scams but I don't close my mind. I want to steal wisdom from anybody. You know why ? Because it doesn't matter if you're a fool or not. It matters that this crap worked for you and I'll use this.
After years and years I'l understand the real meaning of this crap.
By the way, the meaning of life is 42. Well known fact.
Who need NLP when you have a good towel?!
I only read the last sentence of your comment, since it has a Douglas Adams reference :)
Careful now. It's one thing to says some people are kooky, another to say they're crooked. A "because science" attitude isn't enough to turn not understanding into a refutation. When you say "THINK! Don't just believe," consider that it is actually more difficult to persuade someone to adopt your view, when you make assertions about what their behavior should be, in all caps. Mocking those with whom you disagree will rarely convert them to your side. That said, I did appreciate that you provided a link to a study. This post could have been made into a real argument had you done more of that type of research.
I think you're a bit uninformed about how the law of attraction works.
It's actually quite simple. What one obsesses over in their mind, they seek mostly that out in their daily life. Your actions are attracted towards fulfilling your inner-most desires, but there's usually a fear in the way of getting what you want and this creates inner conflict and experiencing seemingly the same unwanted circumstances on loop.
We feel like we can't be "real" with people or even with ourselves because we don't feel free to make the picture we hold in our minds match what we see in "reality." But the only real thing in the way of being free to make it happen are the fears and inhibitions that make us hesitate and stutter every time we try to take a step towards realizing our inner-most goals (the image we hold inside our heads of the "ideal self" and "ideal life").
As long as we keep taking a step forward and bouncing back from those fears, we keep attracting those same, or similar, situations. We can't help but do this because the core of our being (the unconscious mind) finds its only motivation in fulfilling its desire; thus, it keeps bringing us back to the same, or similar, situation so that we may overcome the fear and take the next step towards realizing the desire(s). It's only the superficial persona, the personality that was conditioned through up-bringing, what we all know as the "conscious self," that's creating the resistance to push through and free up the mental energy that's bound by the fears.
Once some of those mental barriers come down, we notice that the quality of our experiences positively change. We aren't as internally conflicted about what we should or shouldn't do (less self-judgmental), we're less frightened by the world in general, and we no longer seem to fall into the same, tired, pattern of actions that lead to the same unwanted circumstances.
The only difference is that the fear is no longer there to stop you from doing what every part of you, besides the "learned" part, knows what's best for you. The attraction to your inner-most desires hasn't changed one bit. You can't help but be attracted to that mental picture. Once all the fears are overcome, all your actions will be entirely purposeful, as the persona will no longer push back out of feeling frightened by change (leaving the "comfort zone") or feeling unworthy due to the self-judgment created by being unsure about which "side" (the persona or the unconscious mind) to trust.
Just in case this wasn't clear, the "attraction" part of LOA isn't some metaphysical phenomena. Rather, it's the unrelenting drive, or attraction, that your unconscious mind has towards fulfilling its desires. It can only achieve them insofar as you, the acquired personalty, allows it by "getting out of its way." So long as you resist you'll feel internally conflicted and generally unsatisfied with your life.
The more that you give in, the less of a "self" that you experience. Your actions may seem to come more spontaneously, as if they control you instead of you it, yet they seem to fit perfectly with the circumstances of the environment, respective to what you want out of it. You still may not be consciously aware of it so much, but your every movement will be full of purpose, aligned with your inner-most desires, and it will scream to the world and make itself known to even the least conscious of beings, through the sheer intensity of focus and presence that this freedom presents our amazingly powerful consciousness with, that you will have it your way...and you generally do when you're so fearless, confident and focused.
I find it interesting that you put the law of attraction down, and then later in your blog you tell us how you became successful and what you did, which in basic terms is what the "Secret" is also. Yes, some gurus use it to make money and it has been taken out of proportion, and as with anything else in life, when people "try" something and it doesn't work, that never stand up and take the blame, there is always an excuse as to why it didn't work for them. I agree with a lot of what you say but there are still questions and outcomes that science can never answer!
I agree with the above comment and your text also. Selling law of attraction is bullshit and having confidence to try out your ideas should be something we get from our culture and surrounding people, not some dodgy self help guru. But since at least western culture what I personally represent isn't the most supportive on personal confidence, rather fear and consuming, so positive thinking patterns and ridiculously believing in your self might be what you need in order to avoid being a clog in someone else's machine.
Quoting the part that I thought was worthy of an upvote.
Veerra, is that you, the crazy Finnish wench we all love? :D
who else :P
👍nice post, see the newest ur post @menta
Amazing post @menta
You're right. There are still questions that science can't explain... for now.
We know so little of how the brain works, that we'll be discovering a lot of new things the coming years. I'm sure science will have an answer for everything if we give it enough time
As I understand it science cannot answer everything due to the scientific method. The scientific method seeks only to disprove a hypothesis. It cannot prove anything. As we disprove various hypothesis we leave various other explanations on the table but do not prove them. What is left standing is not necessarily true, it just hasn't proved to be false.
Not sure if I made this clear.
Plus there's the fact that science is based on objective measurements, while things like our subjective experience of the world aren't measureable. It's also based on repeatability. Imagine a unique cosmic phenomenon that only happens once every 100,000 years. It's gonna be pretty hard to observe it.
Believing that science can explain everything is a religious belief. The only thing we know for sure is that science explains many things.
This is one of the best comments I read in a long while.
I agree completely with what you said. Science only disproves other possibilities. The power of elimination.
What possible evidence could you have that science will have an answer for everything? Is science so fine and perfect that it has no flaws, no blind spots, no sphere in which it can't find the truth? Is science a god?
I think you're missing the point.
The only way to find the truth, is through scientific discovery. I never said I blindly believe in science, that would be silly.
For me, I only believe things that are proven, preferably through empirical evidence.
I wouldn' t say that the law of attraction is total bs. But it's the same as with luck.
Just passively waiting that something happens will not make you successful, lucky or is a solution to any problem.
You have to kick yourself every day to get up and do something.
But then the law of attraction works. The more you're in contact with successful people the bigger the chances are that you're also successful. The more you have to do with money the bigger the chance that you also make some money. The more you learn the bigger your chances to get a cool job.
So i think the "secret" is not wishing for something but getting started to work for it. Get out of your passive state and get into an active one. Create your own world. But then you'll for sure attract other creative people and it seems that things fall into your lap.
Only changing your thinking doesn't work.
If you don't like the past results it's time to change how you do things. If you keep doing it the same as before you can't expect different results than before.
Any good system that actually works tells you that much. I have no idea if this "Law of Attraction" thing does that or not, but I've met a lot of bashing it from people who are all about using magic (or "magic" if you like) to bring positive change in their life.
At least that is how I use the term. You work with yourself & your life changes for the better? That is what I call magic. NLP is a good example of something that qualifies as magic in my book. From what I've heard about "Law of attaction" & "Secret", they omit some important steps to qualify.
Thing is, most of that works that way as you and OP describe. But the best description that I've met is one by ancient greeks in their concept of Kairos. Kairos is the fortunate moment, when you have an opportunity to do something significant. It is something that you have to be ready for, and you have to take action when you encounter that opportunity. It was depicted as a flying guy with a single lock of hair, and that was only way to catch him, but you only had one shot, so you had to be prepared.
I think that a lot of the problems that create that market for self-help is that people are looking for a "magic bullet", that would allow them to acheive their desires without doing any actual work. Looking into yourself, and changing your habbits are a lot of work. But if you take any system, even one that ommits that part, and add that bit, if you are prepared and keep looking at word for opportunities, you will most likely do better then someone who only uses "positive thinking".
I myself prefer works like "Prometheus rising" by Robert Anton Wilson, as a "self-help" & brain-hacking manual. Stuff by Joseph Campbell is also great in that regard, although it is somewhat more than self-help & brain hacking.
Yeah true. Lots of those systems forget to mention the implementation parts of those ideas.
Because any goal (being lucky, be successful) without a strategy how to achive it is nothing more than an idea. The problem with that is that the implementation and espcially the details take most of the time and work.
I really like the concept of kairos, never heard of it before. But that's exactly what i said.
Only if you're prepared the luck can hit you.
for example :
You can only make a bargain buying a rare oldtimer car when you are prepared to pick up the car on a trailer, have space at home to park it, have sufficient funds available and most important to find the offer before others do which requires at least having setup an email notifier alert or checking specific platforms manually. If those things aren't fulfilled that opportunity will simply pass. Some will say that was luck, others say it was good enough preparation and taking an opportunity.
I've read one of that Law of Attraction books, not sure if its the one which initially was spoken about and i think it wasn't that bad. It was more about the mindset than implementation but if you don't take it as the one and only truth and research other literature in this context too then it is worth a read.
For some people it already helps when they start with slowly changing their mindset which i would say is a requirement if you really want to work on your habits. You will fail for sure if you're sure about that in the beginning already. Perhaps the same reason as why those "xxx for dummies" books are such a success. They abstract themes as much as possible to make complex themes easier understandable.
Just see "law of attraction" as "theoretical success for dummies", that helps :D
The practical part then helps with the implementation :D
Which is weird, because some (lots? most?) traditional systems have it in them. Perhaps problem with them is they aren't stated plainly enough with all those hots people in the past had for obfuscating their insight so it wouldn't fall into "wrong hands".
I mean one of the most common things for this kind of stuff is a tarot deck, which follows a good blueprint for thinking about change. Basicly there are four suits that are the following steps & answer questions that they all rise you are in for a good start:
Then there are trumps, which are archetypes & roles, and the whole thing is quite good to break down any situation into easy to understand chunks.
I've seen psychologists develop & use systems that work with symbols from persons personal vocabulary & mythology, which are also quite great. But this stuff works for those purposes quite nicely also. :->
Oh, another thing is all this stuff needs discipline. From what I read & observed it takes people around a month of daily repetition to make something into a habbit, but there is a hack, that if you start with things that are small, quick & easy and then expand them once they are part of daily routine it is a good way to go around chaging your life. When they say "start small" they aren't kidding.
Cool sounds like i should read a bit into tarot. Never saw it from that point of view.
But you're onto something there. Nowadays people want it served easy understandable so that you can read it in the 5mins of your midday break. See again "xxx for dummies". Also information doesn't need to be obfuscated anymore like many years ago, we're living in times of the internet. The largest knowledge base ever available if you're able to find the right data.
And very true that the same principles which are discussed in law of attraction or so many other success/lifehack blogs/sites/articles can also be found in buddhism or most martial arts philosophies.
Mostly the same stuff packed into new words and a new context and i think that's also the breaking point. You simply need to start somewhere. Each generation or group of persons has its own contexts in which it can understand concepts. And everyone can have its own entrypoint for his specific context to enter the world of working on yourself and development as a person.
But we're drifting away from the original post somehow. I think when people are lead to thinking about themself and their actual mindset that is great in any way. Just don't be fooled that it stops there and that when you think about what goes wrong it will change. You have to be active to actually change something then.
btw....thanks for this great discussions...kairos and tarot really made really curious to read more about it
Actually, it's funny you bring up luck.
My post was inspired by a brilliant post by @cryptogee
About how luck is not a factor. Even though people perceive you as lucky. You can't attract luck.
The fact that the law of attraction gets sold as scheme to get rich or to achieve your dreams, is what really irks me.
Hehe...i know which post you mean. I commented on that one too, saying that luck is not a passive state.
It's something you need to be prepared for. Either by learning in advance or having the right ressources at that moment to be able to accept your "luck".
If you aren't prepared the luck will simply pass you.
Yeah i know what you mean with that self-help gurus, but isn't it that people actively decide to believe them and give them their money although there's enough info on the net for free. It comes always down to the same. Educate yourself and resolve dependencies to external persons/knowledge by doing so.
The more you know the lower the chances that others can scam you.
I would say you can attract luck. But not by thinking that you're lucky and that you deserve it. You need to be prepared and work for it. And then it's taking opportunities.
in the first half or so you shoot down the concept of the law of attraction then in the last part you show how you implemented the principles to make it work for you.
you're kinda crazy Huh?
check out this audio book that's been around for quite a while maybe it can help you see the connection between how you think, act and create the circumstances that you experience i love this book it changed my life it is called "As a man Thinketh"
this is an audio book on youtube
Sorry, but the law of attraction is a far cry from the NLP techniques. What I tried to explain in this article is the big gap between a marketing product like 'the secret' and the teachings of people who actually did research in this field.
Self help. Mindfulness. Most of that stuff is counterproductive. It's just comforting to read because the message that keeps being reinforced is that you are not responsible for your own personal failings, that you are misunderstood, under-appreciated, etc. The best thing anyone can do is to take personal responsibility for themselves and their situation, both good and bad.
https://steemit.com/life/@razvanelulmarin/if-you-can-t-stand-positive-thinking-read-this you might like this if you haven't already. but the book i recommend here is amazing, i'm sure you'd love it @condra!
Excellent comment. Taking responsibility is one of the greatest skills one can have.
Something that is lacking with people believing in 'higher powers'. Whether its religion or something esoteric as the LOA.
It gives piece of mind to people. They can put their trust in 'something bigger' and can brush off responsibility through it.
To me, the importance of personal responsibility goes hand in hand with my libertarian leanings. Politically in the Western world, from what I can see online, there is what I would call an "epidemic of abdication".. Abdication from personal responsibility, accountability, self ownership.
That is the main characteristic of the movement known as the "regressive left". Everything is, according to them, societies fault/responsibility. Governments fault/responsibility.
I don't buy into that shit for a second, and I wish less people did, but... again, it's comforting. Delusion and/or cognitive dissonance on a grand scale.
To add to that: https://steemit.com/life/@razvanelulmarin/if-you-can-t-stand-positive-thinking-read-this
I fully agree with this post: I will believe in what can be demonstrated. That's the truth as I consider it (and I don't care about the Truth with a capital 'T').
https://steemit.com/life/@razvanelulmarin/if-you-can-t-stand-positive-thinking-read-this
it is something we learn from life...you wait you waist...change is always educational.